Please Don't Weigh Me at the Zoo

Sunday, January 19, 2014

I am back. But this time I'm REALLY back. There's probably not anyone here anymore, and I'm sure that I'm talking to myself here, but hey...I'm good company!

Let me get you up to speed. As is my way, I'll give the bad news first.

The bad news is, I think that I've gained most of my weight back. There. It's out there! And in truth, I can't tell you when it started. What I can tell you is that, for me, gaining weight is tied to me not weighing in, not counting calories, and not doing purposeful exercise. Surprise, right? No. Of course not. Despite what some say, the key to weight loss is no special formula, no secret cleanse, no fad diet. It's calories in < calories out. That's really it. Seems so easy, doesn't it? And it is. We are the only monkey wrenches that are thrown into that simple equation. And I am my own WORST monkey wrench.

The neutral news is that I haven't weighed myself in ages. I've gone to the doctor for my regular exams over the past year, but I've turned my head when the nurse weighed me. So I have no idea where I am, but I know that my clothes don't feel good. And I know that I feel the extra weight. I can just tell that I take up more space than before. Depressing? No. A bummer? Of course!

Now, to end with the good news. :) I am still physically active. I am lazier, and I have less motivation to do things, but I do them anyway and I am capable of them. Hubs and I have been skiing quite a bit this winter and have another trip planned next month. We hiked through hiking season and summitted some very tough mountains. Then again, there were some that we didn't summit. We blamed it on not starting early enough, and therefore subsequently would be returning in the dark, which we didn't want to do, so we'd turn around. But the truth is that we started plenty early. I just required too many breaks and was hiking too slowly. That makes me sad, but I know that I am not powerless over it. Because what I also know is that it will just take a little more purposeful exercise to help me, and I can certainly manage that!

So here I am. I am a statistic, I suppose. And I'm a bit ashamed, to be honest, but I know that I'm not the only one fighting the battle. I don't look down on anyone who is struggling with their weight, and so I shouldn't look down on myself. Right?

Right. :)

Stay tuned for Weigh-In Wednesday, please. And if you're here, let me know. :) And be my cheerleader, because even if I don't want to admit it...it helps.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Gosh, it's only been about hundred years. I'm not actually sure when I last blogged, and now Blogger has this whole new layout that I don't know my way around yet, so...just hi.

I'm way too tired right now to properly blog, and that is because I am on day one of the Reboot Your Life program, lovingly detailed in the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. I figure if a 430-pound trucker can juice for 60 days, I can juice for a mere 30.

So, obviously, day one just sucks ass. There's not even a nicer way to put it. I'm tired, cranky, tired, and did I mention tired? Sugar detoxing is the pits, I tell you. The pits.

What I am not is hungry. That surprises me in a way that I cannot even fully verbalize. I find that it takes me about an hour to finish a massive cup of juice, partially because it's so massive and partially because it's so effing DISGUSTING. I need to work on my recipes, clearly. But yes, praise whomever that I'm not hungry.

This is a lame post, but I'm tired. Have an awesome picture for the road. :)

This is just a sliver of the view into Tuckerman Ravine, a few hundred yards from the summit of Mount Washington. My body, though perhaps carrying a little extra weight here and there, allows me to hike and mountain climb to some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I am grateful. :)

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day, folks! I'm proud to say Hubs and I swapped health-oriented gifts this year - the Gregory Baltoro 70 mountaineering pack for him and the Gregory Deva 70 for me! These packs won Backpacker magazine's Editors' Choice award for best mountaineering pack in 2008. It couldn't have happened at a better time, because Hubs and I just decided last night that we're going away again the first week of March to do some hiking/snowshoeing! I'm so excited to hike with this pack. (It's the little things, people.)

(Note: I just ate an entire Ghirardelli peppermint bark bar that I got from one of my patients. I'm going to pretend that didn't happen. [By the way, they're creamy and delicious.])

Okay, on to dieting wisdome now. (Ha!) Over the weekend I started reading Feeding the Hungry Heart by Geneen Roth. The book was written in 1982, but I really do believe that it's still relevant today. Basically, she talks about a concept that is more familiar to people today than it was 30 (!!!) years ago, and that is the concept of emotional eating - eating for comfort, to relieve stress, to fill a void. I'm only about 20 pages in, and although I've known for some time now that I'm an emotional eater, the book is still giving me some things to think about. Let me give you one example of what I've realized.

Obviously, eating mindfully is important. If we can slow ourselves down when we're eating and really experience our food - the taste, the smell, the texture - then we would enjoy it more and subsequently need less to satisfy us. Right? Right. I know this is true, of course it is. We know our tastebuds get "numb" after so many bites of something, and at that point we're just eating to eat. Which brings me to the next point, and that's the importance of eating until you're not quite full but just about - perhaps a 6 on a scale from 1-10, keeping in mind that in about 20 minutes our brain will have gotten the signal that our bellies are full, which will take us to a 7 or 8.

I can't tell you how many times I've eaten to a 10, and half an hour later feeling so full that I was nauseous. Yet something inside of me drives me to eat until I'm uncomfortable, something in my head whispers to me and tells me that if I'm a 10 then I know I'm full. And what does "full" mean here? It means so much more than simply not hungry. It means that my nameless void is filled, at least for the moment. And that means that I don't have to think about anything else except my uncomfortably gorged state - no time for anxiety, for doubt, for self-reflection and perhaps not liking what I see. Just food, fat, and the hope that I can shit in the near future for a little relief.

So what do I mean by "in the zone"? Well, it goes back to mindful eating. I have tried mindful eating before and it's very upsetting. Want to know why? Because if I'm mindful about what I'm eating, I'll stop sooner rather than later. Try to wrap your head around why THAT'S upsetting. Nevermind, I'll just tell you: It's because if I stop eating, then what? What fills my void? What alleviates my anxiety? How do I accept the less-than-wonderful things I see in my self-reflection - the fact that I'm not exercising as much as I should be, that I don't clean/organize as much as I should, that I don't try new places or things? I don't want to have to sit with my anxiety, I don't want to see the negative parts of me, so I can't be mindful when I eat. Nope, I just shut off that "mindfulness switch" and pathetically and methodically move from bag to mouth (chips are my go-to food), back and forth, back and forth. Knowing that I'll eventually reach 10. Knowing that I can't stop now because the saltier my mouth gets the less I have to focus on life. Knowing that I should be getting on the treadmill but eating is so much easier and delicious.

So now let's come back to the present. It's Monday morning, and you all know how I feel about Mondays. I woke up this morning feeling not quite empowered, but at least a little hopeful. Over the weekend I made seven-layer bars for Hubs, which are delicious, and I decided to have one for breakfast because I knew I would eat one eventually today, so why not make it legitimate. When I punched the recipe into my LoseIt! app on my iTouch, I learned that one bar has 585 calories in it. Nope, that wasn't a typo. So then I said to myself, "Well, it's Valentine's Day." (There's almost always an excuse.) Then I got to work and ate that candy bar I mentioned up there, "because I already screwed up for the day," or at least that's what I told myself. But what is the truth? The truth is that I have a lot I want to get done and I'm not making the time to do it, I haven't exercised in ages, and I had a rather unsuccessful food weekend. All of that anxiety and mild self-loathing makes that void absolutely yawn, and so I yearn to fill it. And then the cycle begins again.

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Wow, how cathartic. Nice to have that all out of my head and written down. Perhaps that means I can start to attack it? We'll see. In better news, I'm on track as far as my weight loss goes - I lost 1.5 pounds last week! No small feat given all of these damn mental barriers.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Mondays, firsts of the month...all good times to recommit to your healthy lifestyle, right? That's what I tell myself every Friday and Saturday night, or on like the 25th, 26th, 27th (etc.) of the month when I feel pleasantly gorged from a calorie-laden, satisfyingly fatty, all-around-happy-making meal. So imagine the meal I eat when it's the weekend AND the end of the month!

Well, I won't go into details, but I can say it wasn't pretty. I didn't binge eat or anything like that, but my weekend did involve the following elements: 1) Cheesecake Factory, complete with cheesecake (because how could you not?), 2) my brother-in-law's birthday, complete with birthday cake, way too much wine, and lots of cheese and crackers, and 3) homemade chocolate chip cookies. I made over 50 on Friday and I think there are 7 left today. I wonder how that happens. (Hint: It's not Hubs' fault.)

The good news? Well, I'm maintaining my weight. I haven't gained, which of course is a miracle. Too bad I'm not looking to hold steady, eh? So okay, I have a bad weekend behind me...and today is February 1st! Oh, thank you Jesus for the first of the month again. You bestow those on me 12 times a year and I am just TICKLED.

I am feeling a little more serious this month, for two reasons. The first is that I am meeting up with a few of my girlfriends in April for a weekend of drunken, bisexual debauchery in New York City. I would like to lose a little more weight by then (even though I look super-fabulous already). The bigger reason though is that we have our family's annual beach vacation in July, and quite frankly I'm tired of not being at my goal weight every time we f*cking go.

So here's the deal. I have 23 weeks (and a few days) before that vacation. If I commit to losing 1.5 pounds a week I can be down about 35 pounds, which really isn't that lofty of a goal. I'd rather be down 45 (keeping my fingers crossed for 2 pounds a week!) but 35 if better than nothing. Of course that means I'll only be down 12 pounds by my Girls' Weekend, but again, it's better than nothing.

Since today's Tuesday, that will be my official weigh-in day. I'll have to wait until next week though, because I just had cereal and coffee for breakfast. ;)

Oh...and please don't look back in my blog at how many times I've "recommitted", okay? Have some mercy. ;) And hey, I still lost over 60 pounds and have kept it off for 2 years. That's a victory, right???

Happy Tuesday! (I'm taking a non-sick sick day today. Wheeee!)

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Pssst, hey Lauren...thanks for kicking me in the pants to get another entry up! :)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Oh my, folks. Let me tell you about this weekend. Well, to preface, let me tell you that I bake like Betty Crocker. I'm seriously an amazing baker, and when I bake something, I can't help but to partake. And so on Friday night, as a gift to my husband for being an amazing man, I baked chocolate chip cookies. 52 of them.

I think that 35 of them may have found their way to my stomach over the course of my three-day weekend. I'm not exaggerating or trying to be funny...I actually think that happened. I say that because there were only about 15 cookies left as of this morning, and I just didn't see Hubs eating as many as I did. Well, that and the fact that Hubs just doesn't binge-eat like I do. Oh, and on Sunday morning Hubs brought me a donut back from the coffee shop, and I scarfed that as well. If it weren't for the cookies and the donut it would have been a successful weekend.

Hmmm...okay, that's kind of a lie. Because Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night, about an hour before we fell asleep, I binged like a starving animal. Well, maybe it doesn't quite classify as bingeing, but I ate a LOT. Potato chips, pretty much as many as I could shove in my mouth over a 15 minute period; mixed nuts, which were so delicious and salty and salty and delicious; did I mention chocolate chip cookies? Oh, and caramel corn, tons of it. And last night - the piece de resistance - there was pretty much nothing left in our pantry so I found a box of crackers we got in a gift basket for Christmas and pretty much ate three-quarters of those.

Wow, this was like confession.

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Today has been more successful on paper, but not mentally. I had a good fiber-filled breakfast, a great fruit- and veggie-filled lunch, and I have an apple and a cheese stick for my commute snack. But mentally and physically...and I really think it's both, though more mental when it comes to what I choose to eat...I'm ravenous. I want to eat and eat and eat until the horrible food demon inside of me shuts the hell up, I want him to feel satisfied for once, and I want him to leave me alone. He's like the monkey on my back that I keep feeding so he'll quiet down, only perpetuating the cycle. Fucking monkey can kiss my ass.

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And that was cathartic.

Happy Tuesday, folks. Send good vibes out into the universe for me to have a better week, would ya? ;)

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Oh, and how could I forget? I lost two more pounds last week, bringing me down 5 pounds in two weeks. Not bad, except that I probably undid most of that over the last four days. Boo!!!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Happy Friday, folks! This is just a very quick check-in to say that I weighed in today and lost 3 pounds. This takes me down to a whopping....oh, damn it. I just still can't write that number! Instead, I'll leave you with a few pictures from vacation last week. We were snowshoeing up to a point called Artist's Bluff in Franconia Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This hike is just enough to get the heart pumping in the spring, summer, and fall...but in the winter on a pair of snowshoes it's WORK! And it was a great time. :)

That's pretty much a 45 degree angle. (I was a physics minor...I'm not exaggerating!)

See that rock up there? That's the high point, and that's where we eventually ended up.

Hubs took this picture. Snowshoeing this really was a fun time.

And the view is ALWAYS worth it. :)

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In other news, my eye is STILL blurry. I went to the ophthalmologist for a follow-up yesterday and he said, "Yeah, that's definitely not a corneal abrasion. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not that. You'll see our corneal specialist next week."

Boy, when someone is talking about your eye, you really don't want to hear them say "I don't know what it is". LOL Ah well...nothing to do but wait until Wednesday to see the specialist and hope I don't go blind or die before then.